In Memoriam: Alina Chan-Kidd

“Hey Adam, sorry for the late night text. I wanted to see if you had heard about Alina passing away.”

I wasn’t even sure if I was reading those words correctly. Alina’s birthday was a couple of days ago. I left a message on her facebook page. If my math is right, she turned 49. No, that isn’t correct. She would have turned 49.

I knew she’d had Muscular Dystrophy for years. I’m embarrassed to admit that I never quite knew what that entailed, despite knowing multiple people who have it. Specifically, Alina had Myotonic Dystrophy.

On the evening of August 9th, she had dinner with her husband, Bill. She took a nap and never woke up.

I’d never have known if her Disney roommate, Heather had not texted me. And I didn’t really know where to put any of it. Alina and I were friends, but obviously not the closest. It’s sad to know that our story ends with me leaving a belated Facebook condolence to her husband.

Unlike a lot of the people I loved in the Disney College Program, our friendship continued on after the semester ended. Alina was the only one of us to stay on with Disney. She got an apartment in Celebration, Florida and started her official career in Research. That means she was one of those people that stand at the front of the park and ask you to take a survey before you give them a dirty look.

At the time, David and I were taking regular trips to Walt Disney World. Between three and four trips a year, as I recall. Many times we slept on Alina’s couch and got into the parks with Alina’s gate pass. She was good like that.

There are snippets of things I could tell you about her, but nothing she’d probably want as a memorial. That’s how most friendships are, moments that amount to a connection, but not always tales of interest.

I wish I had more stories of her from those days. Or stories of her in general.

One of my favorite lines from Doctor Who-

“We're all stories in the end... just make it a good one, eh?"

This is going to come off as so narcissistic, but Alina’s death just reinforces how glad I am that I wrote my book. For one thing, it renewed our connection. Alina and I hadn’t spoken much since she and her husband moved back to her hometown in California. We’d shared the odd text on facebook here and there, but we both had our own lives.

When I started writing Earning My Ears, she was among the first people to actually read the original drafts and encourage me to keep going. Eventually, she became one of the editors on it.

A few years back, I lost a friend to cancer. Greg was a grumpy old man whom I’d worked with. He went pretty quickly after his diagnosis. The thing that breaks my heart most was the aftermath. I was asked to clean out his desk. Years of random parts and hundreds of Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues. I was instructed to take it all and drop it in the dumpster. And that was it. That was all that amounted to an old man’s life. Gone and nothing left.

But Alina’s story lives on in some way through the book. And that isn’t a bad ending.

Rest In Peace, my old friend. You were gone too soon. But I will never forget you.